You are staring at a stack of EOBs and wondering why a claim from three months ago still hasn't been paid, only to realize it was never actually sent. Relying on memory or sticky notes to track unpaid insurance leads to missed revenue and frustrated patients who receive surprise bills months after their visit. Using the open dental outstanding claims report is the only way to ensure every dollar owed to your practice is accounted for and followed up on systematically.
Before You Start
Before you can rely on the report, your practice must maintain accurate claim statuses. Ensure that every claim has been correctly marked as "Sent" or "Waiting to Send" in the Account Module. If you are using electronic claims, verify that your clearinghouse is properly configured in Setup > Program Links > Clearinghouse. Additionally, ensure that all insurance plans are correctly attached to the patient's Family Module so that the claim generates with the correct carrier information and fee schedule.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Follow these steps to generate and work through your insurance aging list:
- Navigate to the Manage Module or the Reports menu at the top of the main window.
- Select Reports > Standard > Monthly > Outstanding Insurance Claims Report.
- In the Outstanding Insurance Claims Report window, set your filters. To see everything overdue, set the "Date Range" to cover the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- Select the "Insurance Carrier" if you want to focus on a specific payer, or leave it blank to see all outstanding claims.
- Click the Submit Query button to generate the list.
- Review the list. To investigate a specific claim, double-click the patient's name to open the Account Module.
- Locate the claim in the patient's account, double-click it to open the Edit Claim window, and check the Status History tab to see when it was last sent or if there are any notes regarding previous follow-ups.
- If you need to update the status, change it in the Edit Claim window and click OK to save your changes.
Common Mistakes
The most frequent error is failing to update the claim status after a follow-up call. If you call an insurance company but do not add a note in the Status History tab or update the claim status, you will find yourself calling on the same claim repeatedly. Another common mistake is ignoring the "Procedures Not Billed to Insurance" report; if you rely solely on the open dental outstanding claims report, you will miss procedures that were completed but never attached to a claim in the first place. Finally, if you click Receive Payment without selecting the procedures first, the payment will be applied to the entire claim balance, which can cause significant headaches when trying to reconcile partial payments or denials later.
Related Scenarios
If you are dealing with secondary insurance, you may need to use the "Hold until Pri Received" status to prevent the secondary claim from being sent prematurely. If you have received a bulk check from an insurance company, you will need to use the Batch button in the Account Module to distribute the payment across multiple patients.
Track all your outstanding claims at a glance with DentalCanvas — a visual dashboard that shows your insurance aging, pending claims, and collection trends in real time.
This article is provided by opendentalsupport.com, an independent community resource. We are not affiliated with Open Dental Software, Inc.